The Walking Dead/Co.Create Zombie Business School continues. Last time, we discussed how companies could take their branding cues from the way the zombie apocalypse show rallied between seasons. In this installment, executive producer Glen Mazzara talks about how running The Walking Dead helped shape his managerial style, and how that can translate to traditional business.

(Tina) - whether or not you are a fan of zombies - this is a great article on managerial transparency and effective leadership in creative industries. It's also a bit of brilliant promotion from AMC and The Walking Dead ;-)

"None of us should be satisfied with what we believe brands to be capable of. Whatever we believe that capability, it can be more. "

Tina Stock's insight:

In this article Simon Pont makes a case for using brands as "entry-points into story worlds." In effect, he is addressing a very interesting confluence between the entertainment/art community and the marketing community.

As we all know, the business models in the entertainment/art community are rapidly evolving from a tightly controlled hierarchy with regulated channels to a free-for-all where artists are going straight to the audience, and the audience is increasingly fractured and dispersed.

Likewise, marketers are trying to evolve from a disruptive voice to an integrated voice.

Removing the artificial barriers of "product placement" and "branded content" creates a landscape where creators and brands create something greater than the sum of the parts.

This article comes from the land of software adoption -- you know -- buying a program or app and then learning how to use it.

Some companies really suck at these instructions or "onboarding" as they say in the tech world. Some are great at it. I'm sure we've all wanted to tear our hair out in frustration when this process does not go well. Yeah, like I'm supposed to read what's in software genius' head so I can use the !$%*&#! product.

So imagine my delight when reading this article about how to use stories to understand what the user (that's me) needs to know and do for a successful software experience.

But wait! I realized that this post applies to almost ANY business and its products. Hooray -- we can all use the tips, advice, and insights presented here.

I only have one part to nit-pick about -- the section on how to evoke stories from customers. The method they suggest will only get you thoughts and opinions -- NOT STORIES. So use solid story prompts to get the work done: "Tell me about the time when..." "Tell me what happened when..." "Tell me about the time you were most frustrated..." "Tell me about the experience that led you to..."

I do agree when the author says to keep digging into the stories to find rock bottom motivations and causes that led a customer to your product.

If you need good reasons and practical steps to dig into your customer's experience to grow your business, then read this.

And many thanks to colleague Debra Askanase @askdebra for recommending this article to me. Good find Debra!

These days there’s no shortage of devices on which consumers can view and digest media. This array of platform engagement hasn’t gone unnoticed by the media and entertainment industry as content developers and marketing moguls rush to cap...

When it comes to marketing strategy, videos are powerful. How powerful? On Facebook, for example, videos are shared 12 times more than non-video posts. And let’s not forget YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world (after Google, of course). The ability of videos to increase user engagement is unsurpassed.

According to YouTube’s statistics page, they get over 800 million unique visitors each month, users view more than 4 billion hours of video each month and upload 72 hours of video every minute. That’s a lot of potential for your video....

DailyMotion Matchbox is a free service which allows any web publisher to publish a widget that showcases automatic video recommendations on his pages and to earn a revenue through video ads commissions.

The DailyMotion Matchbox offers a Chrome extension that makes it easy to publish any video from DailyMotion and from other supported video sites on your website.

It is possible to filter the content by limiting your selection of video to a specific channel, group, playlist, user, or language.

To activate the Matchbox you simply need to paste your Matchbox's code once into your website's template. The Matchbox will then appear on each page of your website where this template is used.

I've seen a few of these before and find them all fascinating. The first of ten (above) is beautiful, but be sure to double click on it to enlarge. An intriguing visualization of the tracking of multiple plot lines within each of the books on the left lead to several of the most universal elements of plot.

The larger the color area on the right, the more frequently that plot element is found in the books.

If you were to replace the books on the left with just the titles you teach in a single course, what might be color distribution on the right look like.

Better yet, (perhaps) if your students were given this as an optional learning experience for the books they read in a personal reading program, what would the collor distribution on the right look like.

The potential for adapting this kind of concept to an engaging way for students to contemplate the structures, plots, themes, and genres they explore are limitless.

And best of all, this particular visualization is only the first of 10 to follow in this article!

Google is the undisputed king of online search, and has been for the better part of 15 years. Its popularity and ubiquity are such that nobody “searches” online; they “Google” the information they’re looking for, even when pulling up information in a third party app. It’s easy to see why [...]

Here's a great piece colleague Jim Signorelli put together about how story theory works better as an approach in branding than giving a list of essential story elements or simple story structures.

Right on Jim! It won't take readers long to go through this SlideShare piece and reap the benefits. Of course I love Doug Lipmans story dynamics chart on slide 18, the Identification Filter (oops Jim, there's a typo here!) on slide 20, and the motive chart on slide 27.

The definition of story beginning on slide 37 is OK and goes beyond what most people produce. I'm biased though. I like what Peggy Van Pelt from Disney and I came up with oh so many moons ago -- "a story is an act of communication providing packets of sensory material and an emotional narrative arc allowinglisteners to quickly and easily internalize it, understand it, and create meaning from it."

I like this definition because it focuses not on what a story is, but on what it does. What's the lesson here? There is no 1 right definition. Be aware of the variety of existing story definitions and use the one that fits your objectives at that particular time.

OK -- enough said. Enjoy the insights in Jim's post and keep the light for storytelling well lit and tended!

Buying and searching for stock images can be a tedious and expensive task, especially if you stick to the standard sites. But there are other sites out there, and many of them are better than the status quo. Here are eight sites with great stock photos.

It's the #1 movie of the summer, and Guardians is shockingly on track to become the #1 superhero movie of the year, beating out Spider-Man 2, X-Men: Days of Futurepast, and even Disney Marvel’s own Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

If you struggle with providing a steady stream of fresh, relevant content for your website, you’re not alone. Perhaps one of the best ways to overcome this challenge, while also increasing the value you provide to your audience, is through the process of editorialized content curation.

But while we know that this process (when done right) is beneficial in terms of driving traffic, extending reach and providing interesting and valuable content, what does Google think about content curation? Continue reading →

Tina Stock's insight:

Giving your readers something interesting - whether you thought of it first or not - is always the right thing to do. Glad that google agrees!

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.